Stress and Hedonic Food Consumption Moderated by LHS and
Locus of Control
Introduction
● The amount of people that are overweight is increasing.
● People that are emotional eaters tend to overeat in hedonic foods when they experience feelings of stress.
● It is believed that people use hedonic foods as a coping mechanism for stress in order to reduce the feeling.
Research question
Does stress increase the desire for hedonic food consumption and is this relationship
moderated by Life History Strategy and locus of control?
Hypothesis 1: stress has a positive influence on the desire and choice of hedonic food
consumption and a fast LHS strengthen this relationship while a slow LHS weakens this
relationship.
● Participants with a fast LHS tended to have a higher desire for hedonic foods under a stressful condition while a slow LHS did not increase the participants desire for hedonic foods.
Hypothesis 2: stress has a positive influence on the desire and choice of hedonic food
consumption and an external locus of control strengthen this relationship while an
internal locus of control weakens this relationship.
● Participants with an external locus of control mostly used an emotion-oriented coping style while participants with an internal locus of control tended to use a task-oriented coping style.
● Locus of control significantly predicted the core self evaluation, which was measured using self esteem, and this influenced the consumption of hedonic food items.
Method
79 participants
35 participants
Results
Randomization checks showed that all the variables were not evenly and randomly distributed amongst the conditions.
However, the stress manipulation did evoke more feelings of stress in the high stress condition and therefore the analysis will continue…
There was not a significant effect of the interaction of stress and LHS on hedonic food consumption. This result is not in line with the replication hypothesis and therefore we reject this hypothesis.
Results
There was not a significant effect of the interaction of stress and locus of control on hedonic food consumption. This result is not in line with the extension hypothesis and therefore we reject this hypothesis.
There was also not a main effect of stress on hedonic consumption in both analysis.
Both analysis have been repeated using participants current SES as covariate but this also did not generate a significant result.
Discussion
People do not have a higher desire for hedonic foods when they are feeling stressed.
When people have a fast LHS they are not inclined to indulge in hedonic food items more than the people who have a slow LHS.
People who have an external locus of control also do not indulge more in hedonic food items as their counterparts who have an internal locus of control.
No evidence has been found that supported the existence of the relationship between stress and hedonic food consumption. Nor can we state that the studied moderators have an influence on this relationship.
Limitations and further research
Limitations:
● Only consisted of 79 participants. ● It was an online experiment.
● Most potential participants found the article too long and stopped their participation. ● Participants read the article and afterwards decide to stop and continue later.
Further research:
● Trying to replicate the study using a different stress manipulation. ● Using other personality traits as moderator.
